Katrina Trinko: Enough with politicians and their heroic life stories

I so love the point Katrina Trinko makes here that I'm willing to give her a pass for wrongly including our boss as one of the examples. His candidacy was based on his business experience and his ideas for restructuring the tax code, not some "heroic life story." But not to quibble, Katrina. Your overall point is way too good for us to get caught up debating that.

It's about Democrat Wendy Davis and her campaign for the Texas governorship, which is now in big trouble because we're finding out so much of the story she's been telling about herself is not true. (And it's now in much much bigger trouble thanks to the release of this.) But in a broader sense, Trinko's piece is about the mistake we make when we become enthralled with heroic tales that bear little relevance to the question of whether someone is capable of governing effectively. Trinko writes in USA Today:

Sure, we all love stories that affirm that America remains the land of opportunity, even for those who face hard times. But there's no correlation between having an inspirational life story and having smart policy chops and political wisdom. In fact, there should be concern about integrity when a politician makes up — or blurs — details about his or her life story.

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Voters deserve some of the blame. Whether Democrat or Republican, voters seem inclined to select not just a preferred politician but also someone to idolize. The reality is that it's hard enough to find good, honest men and women who can wisely govern, make smart calls about what legislation to vote for and against, and what issues to prioritize without requiring them to have an almost Hollywood-worthy life narrative.

In the case of Wendy Davis, it was almost guaranteed that things were going to turn out this way. What was the rationale for her candidacy in the first place? She emerged into the public's consciousness by conducting a filibuster in the Texas Senate against regulations on the abortion industry, and that made her a hero with the abortion crowd. I guess Texas Democrats don't have too many other people they think can win a statewide race, so they decided to turn Wendy Davis into a political force they hoped would take back the governorship for the first time since George W. Bush took it away from Ann Richards in 1994. Finally an end to 20 years in the wilderness? But there wasn't much of a case to be made for Davis based on any kind of track record in the area of governance or legislation. So the only way to go was to turn her into some sort of heroic figure. And that's not working out too well because so much of her "heroic story" isn't turning out to be true. To Trinko's larger point, why do we think people who come with these heroic tales are going to be good at running government? What does the one have to do with the other? Nothing. Even though we sometimes find it appealing when a person served in the military or did positive things for their community, that doesn't mean they have demonstrated the ability to craft good public policy, allocate resources effectively or make good management decisions. I would go even farther than Trinko - although she may well agree with this point - and argue that electing people who pass themselves off as heroes is worse than electing some "boring" person. That's because the person with the hero complex will tend to want to act the hero and solve every problem of every person everywhere, and you know what kind of public policy that usually leads to. Throwing money at things, and then when it doesn't make things better, throwing even more money at it and telling everyone how hard you tried because look what you spent. People who are flamboyant and weave interesting tales might make for more compelling subjects of media stories. But what we really need are public officials who can tell the difference between good policy and bad, and choose the former - especially when the heat is on and they might not be all that popular for doing so. Those who like to be seen as heroes often have a problem with that. Those who just want to serve are usually a little better equipped to deal with the heat. From the way things are looking, we're not going to have to find out what kind of governor Wendy Davis would have been, since her story is collapsing and there's nothing else to her candidacy. Maybe this is a good opportunity to put an end to heroic story politicians everywhere. Of course, it would help if the public would stop falling for this crap and voting for such people.